AVI film jerky when played through usb on home cinema

[Johnboy54]

Hi.
I have a 4gb usb stick which I use to play avi/divx films through my home cinema player and projector.
Mostly it's fine, but when fast moving scenes are on it tends to jerk, along with the sound.
Are there any other usb devices for playing these files, or some other usb sticks more suited?
I've tried looking on the net for multimedia usb's but no luck.
I use it because it saves me burning to dvd.
Watch it once, erase.
Good for the planet!
Thanks.
John

 

[studips]

usb sticks have different read write speeds, might be worth finding out if yours is a fast or not so fast one. also, what about the file size? if it's a compressed or smaller file size than a dvd quality flick, the frames per second might be lower, so faster moving sequences become jerky.

 

[Johnboy54]

Thanks for the reply.
The avi files are compressed to about 6 times smaller than a dvd.
The frame rate is the same though.
I found a usb stick on the net a few weeks ago that was designed for avi/divx files - a multimedia usb.
Can I find it again?
No!
Oh well, I'll keep searching.
It's just that the dvd player part packed up, but I can play the converted avi's with the usb stick, rather than fork out for a whole new system.
Thanks again.
John

 

[gblades]

If the problem was the speed of the USB stick then it would have to be very poor. Taking the example of a 900MB file and a hour and a half film that would require a speed of 167KB/s. No 4GB memory would ever be that slow.

How long does it take to copy the file onto the memory stick?
Write speeds are normally the same or slower than read speeds so if you can copy the file on there in say half the time or less than it takes to watch the film then the speed is not the issue.

Most likely it is a limitation in the hardware and it cant decode the video quickly enough so has to skip frames.
I used to use one of these which plays the files very well.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Xenta-Upscaling-Media-Player-Decoder/dp/B0043WBU9G/?tag=gbnetser-21

I now use a WD Live TV box so it can play HD files. I can play a 15GB .mkv off a memory stick (2 hour film) without issues.

 

[Johnboy54]

Been a while, I know, but been researching your suggestion about the box in your Amazon link.
I've bought 3!!
And, they're so small, it's unbeievable.
Couple of inches or so square, that's all.
Got one, and was really impressed, so I got another for in the other room.
I then got one for my dad.
On Ebay, I found a 16gb ultra-speed usb drive, made by Transcend, for £17.47.
Got us both one each.
No more jerky films!
Still jerks when usb stick played in my home cinema usb port, so that must be a limitation with the home cinema, not the stick.
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!
John

 

[gblades]

Glad you are happy with them. I had tried a few others previously aswell but the WD one was the first to really play them smoothly. There are still quite a few avi or mkv files which can be juddery but that's normally down to poor encoding and not the player.

 

[Diyisfun]

I burn avi's to a re-usable disc & watch from the disc.

 

[Johnboy54]

Hello.
I used to, but they didn't seem to stand many erases before I had problems with playback.
Also, as I said earlier, my dvd player in the home cinema packed up, so the avi player I got was a cheap, small, excellent alternative.
John